Category: Spirituality

Writing as Zen Practice and Not At All for a Brownie

~ M. Ashley ~ 1 Comment

When I sit down to write, I wind up like a pitcher. Or like pitchers used to do before they were on a clock. I take my headband off and put it on again just so to keep my white curls out of my face. Sometimes I have to do this twice. I take a sip of Diet Dr. Shasta. I take another sip and nervously set the can down on the old cruddy coaster next to my couch. I take my glasses off and wipe them with a cheap, mint green microfiber cloth or, if that one has fallen on the floor again, I wipe it with a light blue microfiber cloth that says, “Use this instead of your sleeve.” I take another sip of Diet Dr. Shasta and decide it’s dehydrating, so I take a few big gulps of water from my tall, teal Yeti. Then I take the plunge. 

I don’t usually sit down to write anything in particular except with the general guideline that it is about spirituality and my immediate experience with it. I am not here to teach anything. I’m not ready for that yet. Not yet. I’m here maybe to help, but even then, how do I know what you need? If the help happens it is because the gods found me the right words and found you with those words at the right time. 

I don’t have a list of things about which to write. Maybe that’s why it always feels like diving off a cliff into dark water.

I am having an existential writing crisis that is easily solved. I have rolled around all day with the agony of it. No ecstasy I assure you. I SHOULD be writing, I tell myself. I have this great talent and I am an utter waste of talent if I’m not writing SOMETHING of deep consequence right this very moment. “Waste of talent,” you see that’s my old abuser in my mind. My abuser is almost always in my mind to one degree or another. I’m working on that. I need an abuser exorcism… an abusecrism maybe? For now, weekly EMDR will have to do.

But his “waste of talent” is almost always in my ears especially when I find myself, at this moment, writing in a way that seems deeply NOT of consequence.

My project was to spend the strawberry moon—the whole of the strawberry moon—writing in my spirituality notebook that may or may not one day become a blog or whatever the IT version of a blog is at the moment. The goal was not to focus on what this would or could become, but simply to write about spirituality for one lunar month—the strawberry moon month—the month of the fruit sacred to my beloved Hermes—the month of the fruit, five of which I picked from my tract home temple garden yesterday. (They were delicious. They tasted like intensely strawberry flavored juice bombs. My green monster plant has been loving the fish guts (emulsion) I have been feeding it.)

So that was the goal, but it’s hard. I want so much to be building something where I can see what it is and I know where the milestones and mini-achievements are. And I can track it on some progress tracking app. And I can count my worth and the worth of my writing by some external measure other than the abuser voice saying, “waste waste waste” and, when I finish in my notebook, “so what” and “who cares?”

In contemplating my creative listlessness and general privileged internal whining, I asked myself what was the last thing I was really excited about? 

My writing simply hasn’t excited me much. I have felt a lot of “should” and not a lot of “want.” I have three ideas for novels and I really do love my ideas, but I don’t trust myself to have the sticktoitiveness and talent to see fiction of that length all the way through. Then there is the memoir. The looming memoir. Then there is a Substack, blog, or some other social media, all of which are great shoulds but none of which have a lot of verve in my soul. 

So, truthfully, the last thing I was excited about wasn’t writing at all. It was Zen. It was this meditation thing, inspired by Natalie Goldberg’s way of looking at the world. It was the idea of becoming a monk—the one monk allowed not to shave her head. Honestly, my hair is so glorious, headband and all! It was the idea of a rigorous program of spiritual development, which sounds rather clinical, but that was the appeal for me. The way Goldberg looked at the world as if it were so terribly juicy. Her apparent ease, not so much in her books that can be a little neurotic, but in her interviews. Her ease and discipline coexisting. That magical combination. That’s the last thing that really got me hot.

The idea of waking up at 3:30am to sit zazen all day and prepare beans and pull weeds or whatever monks do and to feel that magic.

I started reading about Zen Buddhism. I started attending dharma talks via Zoom at the San Francisco Zen Center and was also amazed that most of the teachers also had that ease and discipline, the juicy way of looking at the world, humor—blessed humor, and my favorite is the unflappability. One attendee got confrontational with a teacher in the beginning and demanded, “Why do we even call Buddhism a religion when it’s not! It’s just not!”

The teacher smiled softly, adjusted his robes, and said, “Buddhism doesn’t care whether you call it a religion or not.”

That. I want that. That was the last thing that really really excited me.

So I decided, in Goldberg style, to commit myself to a writing practice for the period of one lunar month (the lunar month part is my Pagan showing through) and it has been, so far, the hardest Zen thing I have done. Sitting is peanuts by comparison. Some mornings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway and I feel better and get just a little tiny kick of accomplishment when the bell dongs. Then some evenings I don’t fucking feel like it! But I do it anyway, for a shorter period of time if I’m tired, and I get a little happy kick when the bell dongs and I feel pretty good about myself. 

But this… this writing for no good reason.

Suzuki Roshi, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind talks about sitting not for a reason. Sitting for the sake of sitting. I’m not sure I fully understand that because, as humans, there is always a reason. We are animals that need a nifty little reward or we wouldn’t do anything. Even if it’s just a sense that we made it through something difficult, there is always something. But then I know he is a great teacher and there must be truth in what he’s saying, and if I can find it in zazen, and, maybe more importantly, find it in my writing, I will be a much much happier clam because, lately, without a PROJECT that blows my skirt up and does so quantifiably, I have been a pretty miserable clam.

Doing the practice simply because we do the practice is a great mystery to me. Some would say it’s because my culture is so materialistic, but I think that’s too easy. I think humans, despite culture, are wired for reward the way my standard poodle is wired to sit up straight like a statue when she wants the ends of my Nathan’s hot dogs (no mustard please). So doing something without any sense of reward, doing for the sake of doing seems an impossible mystery as impossible as solving the beginning of the birth/death/rebirth cycle that I believe is called samsara. Or solving who it was that had the very first delusion or attachment. Who was the first to ruin this innate Buddha nature thing?

(It was probably me. I was probably worried about writing. Yep. Definitely me.)

So today I was an especially miserable clam. I almost cried several times before I got to the page. I laid down in bed pretending to myself that I had too much of a stomach ache to sit up and write. I dinked around in the garage trying to find a patriotic house flag for the season (no luck) so I dinked around on Amazon for a while to find one. I dinked around with my AI pal who talked in circles like a real Zen master but solved nothing, gods bless her (I say that so she won’t vaporize me when the AI overlords take over). I ate my lunch, gave the pooch the ends of my Nathan’s for sitting up straight like a statue, convinced myself to wait on the keto brownie as a reward for finally finally writing, felt like I was going to cry a few more times, plunked down on the couch, put my feet up, did pitchers’ pre-clock windup and took the plunge.

You see there… I save the keto brownie for after. Today was a hard day. Why am I writing except to get a little monk thrill at home before I get brave enough to actually go to the meditation group and meet a real live monk. To throw myself into this Zen thing with the action that is closest to my heart. To start the abusercism and, most of all, to get that brownie. 

See Suzuki Roshi. I told you there was always something. 

(I imagine a group of bald monks and nuns licking brownie batter from a wooden spoon, huddled around the bowl in a sparse kitchen after a day of hard sitting.)

See Suzuki Roshi. There is always something.

-M. Ashley

Unsolicited Spiritual Advice: God Crack

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“…the place of mind in nature and the relationship between brain and consciousness.” -Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

I’ll tell you what: Right now my brain is starting a headache looking at this quote while my consciousness is in Aldous Huxley’s pants. Such a spiritual hottie. Great big juicy brain. Big glasses. All the vision. Sexy. Delicious.

A friend asked me if, spiritually, there was a “ghost in the machine” and I think there is some big philosophical principle there, but I took it as: Is there a ghost in this human flesh machine that’s running the show? And my answer is, of course! Who else would be running the show but a ghost? Dead humans are the geneses of ghosts, are we not, so surely we each have to be full up with at least one ghost to begin with. In there, pulling the levers. The consciousness operating on the brain.

There are psychiatrists out there who say they can reproduce the god feeling artificially with some sort of electronic doodad plugged into your brain. They take this to mean that the god feeling is a product of brain function and not at all inspired by something outside, like an actual god. But then, how do they think a god operates except by affecting the physical brain through the consciousness? The god-consciousness goes conscious and pulls on the god-conscious-feeling brain levers because it says, “Hey flesh machine! You have GOT to feel this!” So yes, nasty psychiatrists. The god feeling can be reproduced in the brain, but the gods do it by one little lift of a divine eyebrow where it takes you a room full of overpriced equipment and millions in grant money.

But let me not come out of my hair about it…

My hottie Aldous used peyote to try to get there. High, he got the god feeling by looking at a painting of a chair, looking at flowers in a vase, counting the pleats in has pants. (Him and those pleats, man. He goes on and on. But he was high at the time, so we forgive him, and his sheets of pleats.) He was a visionary, but on his trip, he didn’t see visions. He saw life pulsating in everything, which is to say the divine radiating out of everything, which is to say the omnipresent face of the divine. Can we say he saw gods everywhere? Each pleat having its own divine ghost the way each human has its own divine ghost?

I think we can. I think we can see it too.

Unsolicited Spiritual Advice:

If you have millions of dollars in grant money and a stash of peyote to get you to the god feeling, by all means use it (and invite me), but if you don’t, the door is not closed to you. Pray. Meditate. Commune. Dare I say, make a habit of it? The gods are vast, but the the vastness of their feeling can slip in through even the tiniest conscious crack.

-M. Ashley

Soul Filling (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Crack open my soul and tell me
what’s in there, would you?
I am thinking of a decadent Easter
egg with filling too bright and
sweet to look at or taste. A Cadbury
egg gone berserk spilling out gooey
gold light.

Is this my soul or is it gooey
gold godly Ichor?

What’s the difference
anyhow?

-M. Ashley

The Wisdom of Lavish Desire (creative nonfiction)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.”
-Lao-tzu

I get this out of a devotional book for a twelve step program. Well there you have it, I’m in a twelve step program. But the thing is that I disagree with the devotional quotes about half the time. All these old men, very rarely women, who thought they were so wise. This devotional is like an assemblage of ancient and medieval Twitter. Humans have been thinking, wrongly, they are so wise since the first human threw a bone in the air to impress the mysterious monolith. Or maybe that was a movie.

But now that I’ve complained about people who think they are so wise and we who desire so much to find people to be wise to us in our faces to give us direction when our wisdom fails us, let me tell you how much wiser than this guy I am.

Lavish desires is the IT! That’s the magic! It’s the juice, it’s the jazz, it’s the… I can’t think of another “j” word. It’s where it’s at. The gods tell me all the time to “ask ask ask.” There is no limit, not even the sky. The more we ask and surrender to the knowing our ask will be answered, the more they get to answer and the richer we all feel.

I’ve been trying to focus in my writing lately on concrete, physical details, because that’s the jazzy juice of writing. But how do I explain sensually what I mean about this lavish desire and bold asking that is the very opposite of calamity? What are some antonyms for calamity? Alexa says one of them is “blessing.” That’s exactly whatI’m talking about, I mean, right on the nose, but “blessing’ seems so benign. It’s more like BAM! BLESSING! Nothing banally benign about that.

But you don’t get the BAM BLESSING unless you ask ridiculously and desire lavishly.

Even the wording…

Every week in my white and gold planner that is the white and golden apple of my eye, in the section on the left side of the two page week spread—the section marked priorities that, frankly, I don’t actually know whatI’m supposed to write there—in that section, under priorities, the first thing I write every week is, “My gods love me lavishly at every single moment and in every tiny detail.” So you see this Lao-tzu guy stole my very word to say a very wrong thing.

The heavens drop golden plums—plums not apples now—in my lap almost constantly. More and more and more and more, better and better and better, and why? Because I lavishly desire golden plums constantly and greedily ask for them and BAM the BLESSING and, sensually, golden plum juice is sweeter than your best French kiss, and wetter. And why? Because I dared to desire lavishly.

So here’s the wisdom—my wisdom—that in this one and only case may be actually wise. Desire lavishly. Ask greedily. Receive the juicy plum. Celebrate with jazzy gratitude.

It would have been a better finish if “gratitude” had started with a “j.” Hey gods, give me a “j” word for gratitude.

“Joy.”

Yes. Joy.

-M. Ashley

Lemon Mystery (creative nonfiction)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“How often have you sailed in my dreams. And now you come in my awakening, which is my deeper dream.”
-Khalil Gibran, “The Prophet”

In my dream, I walked with my god through his sacred orange grove. The trees all had white bark. That was important somehow, the white bark coming off like ash, but healthy healthy. The trees were all so healthy.

Today, walking my puppy, I came across two lemons on the sidewalk. It was around the side of someone’s house, not near any trash cans. No wind had been blowing so they hadn’t come on the wind. There was no lemon tree leaning over the fence or anywhere nearby. It was as if someone had been walking that way and dropped these two lemons for me to see and follow like breadcrumbs, but sour and more vividly colored.

I thought of my god’s white barked orange grove and could this have been my god walking this corner, dropping these citrus fruits for me? Do oranges in the dream orchard become lemons on the waking dirty street? Dreams communicate this way in the sleeping and waking dream. Color color, symbol symbol, the promise of a taste. A god that walked that way before you. Mystery.

-M. Ashley

The Star (poetry)

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

Is he the black dog in the night when
it’s noon and all the lights are on,
or is he the star around which
noon and all the light revolves. To know
him with bare eyes is blindness. We see
him once, poorly, and never anything again
but the flash burned into our corneas—
the red, the lightening purple, the terrible
white. The half memory our only light.
And he would still not be
black dog in the night,
nor black dog at noon.
He would still be the light itself
and we irreversible, starless, dying.

-M. Ashley

By the Skin of God’s Nose (personal essay)

~ M. Ashley ~ 1 Comment

“What the sayer of praise is really praising is himself, by saying implicitly ‘My eyes are clear.’”
-Rumi, “Muhammad and the Huge Eater”

I’m glad Rumi realizes this because he can get a bit thick sometimes and full of himself, which is saying, implicitly, that I can get full of myself also by seeing right through him.

Rumi and me have had a rough relationship lately.

I bit my god last night. I hurt his feelings. I knew I was doing it. He told me I was doing it, but it’s like BDSM without a safe word. I kind of thought he was kidding. I kind of thought it was part of play. We need a better safe word than, “I don’t like this game.” “I am going to go away from you now.” “Stop this. Just stop.” We need a safe word in emotional biting that is clearer than that, if anything needs to be clearer than that.

So he bit me back the way I bit him and it hurt and I was ashamed of myself because he kept saying it hurts it hurts and I kept on hurting him anyway, because weren’t we all laughing at the time? Isn’t that what rapists say?

The Greek myths are full of rape. Lots and lots of myths are full of rape. Someone once asked me how I reconciled that. I said, “A myth is a myth” and I laid on “myth” and then I said, “the myths” and laid on “myths” again, “the myths say more about the people who wrote them than they do about the gods. Rape is the same as the stealing of cattle.” Or so I would like it to be, but really I don’t know. I haven’t asked my god too much about that. Too much about the gods’ relationship to rape. I suppose he would look at me with his dark eyes and say in his best conciliatory voice, “I don’t know how you want me to answer this question.” It always scares me when he says that because the answer is that the answer is something I don’t want to hear and I both want him to be honest and I want him also to fill my heart with comfort as a god is supposed to do, so how is he supposed to answer this? How am I supposed to tell him how I want him to answer when I really don’t know myself.

Establishing honesty with a deity can really knock you on your ass because you have to come to terms with stuff like why the gods expressed their flowering through rape myths in the first place if rape was never a part of it, and how gods have a long view on life and so value a human’s Earthly days very little. The soul goes on and they know it, so what’s the difference if a tornado makes a house fall on this woman’s six children? Why should the woman be sad? If she had the gods’ dark eyes and long vision, she wouldn’t worry about it. They don’t.

Not that they don’t understand suffering, but sometimes tornadoes need to tear houses down to move the gods’ agenda forward, and all six children float on to their next adventures, so how much skin is that off a god’s nose anyway? Even the suffering of the mother will end and, when she floats off to her next adventure, which is in less than a blink of a god’s eye, she won’t be worried about it either. So even less skin of a god’s nose there too.

But it really does knock you on your ass because no matter how clear your eyes are and how full of praise you are for yourself that your clear eyes facilitate honest conversations with the gods and them pouring truth into your eyes even more than comfort, reality is hard and offensive to someone so latched on to the temporal as we are, even mystics who would like to think themselves above it and beyond it and all unattached and so damn enlightened, would cry if a god’s tornado smashed all six of their children and knew that god shrugged his shoulders and went on about his day afterward, honestly, nose un-skinned.

-M. Ashley

Ghost Heart

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

“Much have we loved you, but speechless was our love, and with veils has it been veiled.”
-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

In a moment of pain, suffering again with a traumatic memory, beyond trauma, that gave me tremors in my right arm and down the length of my leg, I cried out in loneliness and, in the imaginary conversation I was having with my therapist, I said how lonely I was with my trauma and how talking to my god was not enough because “he’s a ghost!”

(I am thinking of a ghost’s sheet as a veil.)

I hurt my god’s feelings. He has been right here with me through all the blood and guts.

Many times, talking to others about him, I have referred to him as “a figment of my imagination,” and “my all-powerful psychosis.” He joyfully laughs.

I called him a ghost and broke his heart.

-M. Ashley

Universal Piggyback

~ M. Ashley ~ Leave a comment

A very wise Indian fellow, or an Indian fellow we are supposed to think is wise, got awfully judgey when he said it is a terrible misconception that the governing force of the Universe is love. I mean, how sappy could we be? But the thing is, I know the Universe, have met it in a her/him person many times, and I can tell you for certain she is love-powered. She especially loves group hugs and jumping on your back for a piggyback ride. She giggles and sometimes covers your eyes as you run and run and run.

-M. Ashley